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I sat up and took in the glow, understanding at last. The space around us wasn’t lit by the lava that churned in the pits on the far side, but by me.

I forced my head to turn, though it felt heavy, as if my neck was made of stone. From the corner of my eye, I could make out my left arm, a familiar manacle and chain holding me fast. But the veins beneath my skin glowed with liquid fire instead of blood.

I was changed. I licked my parched lips and whispered aloud, “What did you do to me?”

The priests around me prayed more fervently. The light inside me flared again.

But Edan didn’t answer.

The answer came with time. From the way they avoided touching or taunting me, the priests were frightened by whatever change had been wrought. More than one whispered of the lord’s coming, but Zahn was the only one to approach.

“You are not worthy,” was all he said as he spilled water on the rocks in front of me, one of his favorite torture methods. He liked to drink and eat copiously while I was bound. Liked to make me beg for his scraps.

For the first time in days, I felt no thirst. It may have been because I was half-dead, but I felt stronger by the minute.

Impossibly stronger. When I tore at my wrists, half-hoping to wound myself and bleed out, my skin would not break at all.

Instead, the manacle bent.

Panic swam through my thoughts, next to the memory of what Edan had used me to do. He’d claimed her. He’d burned her, not only on her throat but her arm. If he could’ve burned out the bite mark from the selkie, he would’ve done that, too. But it would have killed her.

I never would have imagined he could force me to hurt her. I had a terrifying suspicion that what he’d done to my body was meant to hurt her in a more terrifying way.

I gazed at the bubbling pool of lava across the cavern for hours, wishing I could break the chains entirely and throw myself into it. I tried again, but I couldn’t wrench myself free. Zahn came and added another manacle, the breath whistling through his exposed nasal cavities as he climbed over rocks to fasten them himself. He hissed when he inadvertently touched my skin.

“What is happening?” My voice was oddly deep.

“Our god works in terrible and mysterious ways,” he replied. “You’re an unworthy vessel. Soon you will be gone, and he will be all that remains.”

Time was impossible to gauge, except by the comings and goings of the servants of the maw. I could hear the hammering from the far side, where the priests crafted their simple knives.

Edan had bragged of being the finest blacksmith before his brother had imprisoned him beneath Pict, and that may have been true. The maw was a gash he’d made to see into the world after his imprisonment, and where he was fed. The space around it was held in place by a supportive lattice of odd, red-hued metal and long panels of hard obsidian along the walls of the pit, the kind that made up the blades of Rada’s knife.

Normally, the maw was fed only twice a year, on a new moon. Zahn would choose a young Beta male or a priest who’d crossed him somehow to sate Edan’s appetite. He’d thrown Talia in a few weeks back, though, and I’d hoped that would be enough.

But as I hung there, hours wheeling past, Zahn began muttering to himself, blood pouring down his face from what had been his nose. Edan was speaking to him; I could feel the buzz of his words in my mind, though they were impossible to make out.

But Zahn’s actions made it clear what Edan demanded. He lined a dozen of the younger priests up against the wall, chaining them. Then, he and the older servants of the order began to chant, marking the ritual of sacrifice.

One by one, over the course of what couldn’t be more than a few days, he fed the screaming Alphas into the maw, the mouth of the Alldyns Vug.

To my horror, I felt their strength rush through my veins as they died.

“What have you done?” I shouted when the last man’s head vanished under the lava in a gust of dark, foul-smelling smoke, and Zahn came to inspect me.

“Blessed you,” Zahn replied. “For no reason I can divine.”

His eyes glowed with red fire as he stood in front of me. I pulled against the manacles again, and they snapped like pieces of straw.

“How?” I wondered aloud, but I knew. Edan had afflicted me with a piece of himself and was burning the old Serak away, making me into a vessel.

I could feel it killing me still, but my body… I flexed my hand, the veins of fire running beneath the skin shimmering bright red before they subsided. Even my organs had changed now, no longer painful. The only place that hurt was my head. My mind, where I had walled off my memories from him long ago.

His heat lapped at the walls in my thoughts like fire licking at kindling, though, and it would only be a matter of time before he owned me entirely.

Had he changed his course? Had he decided not to breed Rada, and to funnel his full power into this body instead of a child? It seemed ridiculous to think he would take me as his vessel, as mortal and weak as I was. I could almost feel the small particles that made up my body dying slowly, as every human did.

Laughter echoed in my mind. I will admit to being surprised at how well your body withstood the influx of my power. I thought you would melt before you carried enough to be useful. I was almost looking forward to it.